"Collaboration" has been one of the buzz words of the year in the arts, but quite what it means has often been a bit hazy. There are so many questions, and people are having to feel their way. Is a co-production a real collaboration or just a marriage of convenience? When a big institution collaborates with a smaller company or even an individual artist, where does the power lie? Does it matter who owns what? What should you be prepared to give up, and what must you hang on to? Is it a contradiction that in a time of economic pressure – and increased competition – people are being made to share? And who are your biggest collaborators: other artists and institutions, or your audience?

Those were just a few of the many issues raised at Stronger Together, a cross-art form conversation about sharing, collaboration and working in partnership which took place at Northern Stage in Newcastle on Wednesday afternoon with live streaming to the Lyric Hammersmith in London, Cornerhouse in Manchester and Watershed in Bristol. In a cheering metaphor, Bristol baked a cake and sent a quarter to each of the venues.

It was a cleverly formatted afternoon that offered both Open Space discussions and more structured conversations (something that State of the Arts can surely learn from when it moves out of London next year) and plenty of inspiration – both in the initial "provocations", which will be online in a couple of days, and in the case studies and conversations. I loved the 20-minute performance lecture from Third Angel's Alexander Kelly, a self-confessed serial collaborator, and hope that ACE were taking note after their perplexing failure to give his company regular funding.

Everyone there will have taken away different things (and some may even have found the collaborator of their dreams in the so-called speed-dating sessions), but while it's clear that there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all collaboration, certain themes began to emerge. Like marriage, you have to work at collaboration, and on occasion you might need a helping hand – the artistic equivalent of Relate. As Sound and Fury's Dan Jones put it when quoted in Kate McGrath's provocation, "trust is oxygen". Making sure that your own identity isn't subsumed or diluted is important, but so is being prepared to give up on what Slung Low's Alan Lane called "the musts" that everyone takes to the table with them. Being truthful about what has and hasn't worked is crucial if others aren't going to make the same mistakes.

Stronger Together was just the start, but it recognises that the arts will have to collaborate a great deal more if they are going to survive the next few years. That means a real change of mindset, and will entail not just finding ways to share and create artistically, but also sharing resources and information – whether that's about having other people's shows recommended on your website or sharing audience data. At Stronger Together it felt as if people were genuinely embracing change, and saw the new environment as a challenge but also an opportunity. The reality, of course, is that we have no choice: as Pilot Theatre's Marcus Romer pointed out, we have just four years to create a culture that will help make a case to both government and audiences that the arts have a major role to play in this country's life.

• This article was amended on 1 July 2011. The original referred to Dan Jones as Dan Baker. This has been corrected.